1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a flow path opening/closing apparatus that opens and closes a flow path and to a liquid ejecting apparatus equipped with the opening/closing apparatus.
2. Related Art
An ink jet type recording apparatus, an example of a liquid ejecting apparatus, is provided with a suction apparatus (cleaning apparatus) that performs cleaning by sucking bubbles or undesired matters together ink from nozzles of a recording head that ejects the ink.
Because there are cases where the suction by the suction apparatus does not discharge bubbles in the recording head, a so-called choke cleaning is performed (see, e.g., JP-A-2007-331350) in which while a flow path that supplies ink of a recording head is closed by a dedicated flow path opening/closing apparatus the suction apparatus performs suction from the nozzles to increase the pressure in the closed flow path, and then the closure of the flow path by the flow path opening/closing apparatus is discontinued, that is, the flow path is opened, so that the ink in the flow path is discharged from the nozzles all at once together with undesired matters such as bubbles.
However, there are demands that the capability of discharging undesired matters, such as bubbles or dust, from a flow path within the flow path opening/closing apparatus be improved and also demands that the growth of deposit caused by the opening and closing of the flow path be reduced to ensure the reliable opening and closing operations.
That is, inside the flow path opening/closing apparatus, in a liquid reservoir portion where the opening and closing of the flow path is performed, liquid having flown in from an inflow opening that is open to the liquid reservoir portion tends to flow the shortest distance to an outflow opening that is open to the liquid reservoir portion, so that undesired matters contained in the ink, such as dust or bubbles, and components contained in the ink are likely to reside in regions other than the vicinity of a straight line connecting the inflow opening and the outflow opening.
Incidentally, this problem is not limited to the flow path opening/closing apparatuses that are mounted in liquid ejecting apparatuses represented by an ink jet type recording head but similarly occurs in flow path opening/closing apparatuses used in other apparatuses.